There are Free Lunches Statement of Intentions

There are Free Lunches: Behavioral Clues to Live Happy in the Economic World is a blog that intends to present updated and relevant information about the "hidden" and only recently uncovered dimensions of the economic science: the behavioral factors. With this blog we intend to promote in Europe and in the rest of the World, the top research articles and perspectives on behavioral economics, decision making, consumer behavior, and general behavioral science. We aim to be followed by journalists, academics, managers, civil servants, and everyone who wishes to improve their daily interaction with the economic world and consequently, their lives' happiness.

Thursday, 21 June 2012

CO2 #3 Squeezing out the doctor (via TheEconomist)

The role of physicians at the centre of health care is under pressure.

IN A windowless room on a quiet street in Framingham, outside Boston, Rob Goudswaard and his colleagues are trying to unpick the knottiest problem in health care: how to look after an ageing and thus sickening population efficiently. The walls are plastered with photographs of typical patients—here a man who exercises occasionally, there a woman with many chronic ailments. Big sheets of paper chart each patient’s course from the hospital back to a comfortable life at home, with divergent lines showing all the problems that might arise and ways to handle them. To map the many paths to health in this way Mr Goudswaard’s team interviewed a lot of patients and nurses.

But this “war room” does not belong to a hospital. It belongs to Philips, a Dutch electronics company. Mr Goudswaard, the head of innovation for Philips’s home-monitoring business, has no medical training. His speciality is the consumer.

Check this opinion, about the future of medical practices here: MedicalConsumer